


Symbiosis

by Terminallydepraved



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Fic Collection, M/M, One Shot Collection, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-10-20 11:25:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17621498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terminallydepraved/pseuds/Terminallydepraved
Summary: Just a collection of Reed900 fics!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> yo ive got a patron who is a big fan of reed900 and gets a monthly fic from me, so i figured it would be a good idea to make a place to drop all those fics so everyone else can read them too! if there are specific tags/warnings for a fic, check the chapter notes for them. enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kamski and gavin are brothers, just doing as brothers do! Featuring the Chloes and an ungodly hot summer!

The decision to go to Elijah’s house came after much deliberation, a few hours of misery, and Gavin realizing that no, asking for a favor wasn’t even remotely as unbearable as  _ this.  _ This fucking… heatwave from hell had taken over the city in the course of a week, rocketing the temperature upwards to a soul-searing 103 degrees. Gavin had handled it well for the first few days. He’d taken care to drink more water and stay inside as much as the job allowed, and for those few days he’d figured he’d be fine.

Of course, all of that changed when the fucking air conditioning unit in his apartment stopped working. 

Gavin had been home when it happened, asleep and dead to the world. 

He hadn’t stayed that way for long. Maybe an hour later the stifling, heavy weight of too-hot air woke him up, and he’d kicked off his three blankets to find he’d sweated enough to ruin the sheets. A quick call down to maintenance told him everyone’s air conditioning units were shitting out; it’d be Monday before they could fix it, they’d said, not caring one bit that it was only Friday now, and Gavin already suffocating. 

Which was why he was standing here now, on the doorstep of his brother’s enormous mansion and staring up at the camera pointed down at him, wondering whether or not it would be better to just sweat it out back at home. He hadn’t told Elijah he was coming. Hell, he hadn’t even bothered to text him. They weren’t really close in the sense that most families were; Elijah clearly had his own things going on and Gavin was just fine working on his own, distancing himself from their family name to make something of himself that Elijah hadn’t touched. They got along alright when in the same room, but something like this… asking for help, even just an afternoon out of the heat… 

It was a matter of pride when it came down to it. Gavin didn’t like relying on others if he could help it, even if he knew Elijah wouldn’t mind. Hell, he’d probably appreciate the visit. It’d make mom happy too if they hung out more. She always said it was a shame they didn’t see one another more when they lived as close as they did. 

Gavin wrinkled his nose and felt a bead of sweat roll down his neck. It was too fucking hot out here to be thinking of shit like this. 

He huffed out a loud lungful of air and dug into his pocket for the spare key card Elijah had given him ages ago in case he needed to come over. It’d taken thirty minutes to even find the thing this morning, and Gavin had only succeeded when he remembered he’d shoved the thing between the pages of a book Elijah had gotten him for Christmas six years ago that he still hadn’t bothered to read. Too many cases to sift through, too many other things to do. A measure of guilt rolled down his spine like a bead of sticky sweat. Maybe he should give it a glance when he got home. Of course, after the AC was fixed. It was too hot right now to read in that oven of an apartment. 

The key card glistened in the sunlight. Swiping it in front of the scanner elicited a neat little beep, and then the door clicked, opening easily when he turned the handle. Gavin ducked his head inside and glanced around the fancy ass foyer, then let himself in when he felt the blessed kiss of cold, frigid air grace his cheeks in a rush. “Oh, thank god,” he wheezed, closing the door—and the hot, humid air—out behind him. He wiped some sweat from his forehead and moved deeper into the house. Elijah had to know he was here, right? 

“Yo, anyone home?” he called out, taking in the fancy furnishings and the expensive paintings on the wall. God, this place was pretentious. Gavin didn’t remember Elijah’s room ever being this high-brow growing up, but then again, they hadn’t exactly had the money to put in platinum sconces and smart windows, whatever the fuck those were for. Was Elijah too good to draw some fuckin’ curtains? 

Gavin rolled his eyes at that, pushing through the front waiting parlor and into the next room. It probably wasn’t all that fair of him to think like that. Elijah had money so he could spend it on whatever he wanted. If Gavin had millions of dollars, he’d probably spend it on shit like that too. Or a working air conditioner. Definitely a pool. A big, massive pool that—

Wait. Gavin sniffed, his eyes widening. He  _ smelled  _ a pool. The warm chlorine of it, he could smell it. Oh, fuck, that was right, wasn’t it? It’d been ages since he’d been here, but he distinctly remembered Elijah having a pool. A big one. An  _ indoor  _ one. 

Gavin didn’t really think too hard about the rest; he pushed forward at nearly a jog, every inch of his overheated body aching to fall into something cold. A swim sounded like heaven right now. Complete heaven. He followed his nose and turned a few corners, ignoring the fancy paintings, the hyper-modern furnishings and aesthetic. He could think about Elijah’s taste later, preferably after he found the damn—

He turned one last corner and stopped in a rush. There it was. There it  _ fucking  _ was. 

The pool was  _ enormous.  _ In ground and red tiled. It definitely gave off the impression of swimming in blood, but even that had a sort of fancy vibe to it. It was elegant. 

Above everything though, it was a  _ pool.  _ A  _ pool  _ in front of Gavin when he’d been living and sweating through the worst heatwave the city had seen in a decade, and it didn’t take him long to find his fingers itching towards the hem of his shirt. He glanced around, seeing no one. Someone  _ had  _ to know he was here. It was impossible for a house this fancy not to have… sensors or… some nerd shit to tell the owner who was coming and going. 

Gavin bit down on his bottom lip. The water was lapping gently against the edges of the pool, a siren’s song calling out for him to come on in. He inched closer and knelt down, dipping his fingers into the water. Gavin could have moaned. It was  _ perfect.  _

He didn’t let himself think too hard after that. He was here, it was his brother’s pool, and what was family for it not for mooching off of when the weather had it out for anyone not rich enough to have an indoor pool in their front room? Gavin made quick work of his clothes, shimmying down to his boxers. He left his clothes in a messy pile by the ledge, closed his eyes, and jumped on in. 

The pool was exactly what the doctor ordered; Gavin lost himself in its cool embrace, dipping his head immediately and ridding himself of the fever-like heat he’d carried with him since that damn heatwave descended with a vengeance. He swam back and forth, at first ignoring, then calling out to the androids that slowly filtered in to see what all the noise was. The… Chloes— that was what their names were, right? Yeah, the Chloes didn’t seem to be in any rush to kick him out. In fact they seemed pretty happy to see him, greeting him by name. 

“It’s good to see you again, Gavin,” one told him, disappearing behind a panel in the wall and coming out with a towel looped over her arm and a bathing suit on. 

Gavin grinned, replying with, “Thanks. You gonna join me?”

A few other girls came out in bathing suits. It seemed answer enough, and like hell was Gavin going to complain. Before long Gavin had himself a little party going on. And man, you could say what you wanted about Elijah’s tastes and habits, but his taste in girls was nothing to spit at. Gavin couldn’t ask for prettier company. 

With all of the laughing and chatting, it really should have surprised him more to see they’d been caught before an hour had time to pass them all by. 

Elijah walked in just as Gavin was in the middle of coaxing one of the Chloes into telling him some embarrassing stories about his brother. About his habits, the way he dressed, the way he ate; living in a mansion this big had to yield some secrets, right? Something juicy to torment him with come family Christmas maybe. The Chloe he was focusing his efforts on was locked up tight, only smiling at him and laughing at his increasingly grandiose bribes. 

“Um…” 

They all looked up, spotting their generous host. He was fully dressed, a tablet in hand. One of the Chloes waved to him, saying, “Oh, hello there, Elijah.” 

“Yeah, hey there, bro,” Gavin called out, lifting his hand from the ledge to wave. “Hope you don’t mind, I let myself in.”

Elijah didn’t say anything for a moment. His eyes were as wide as saucers, blinking owlishly at Gavin, at the four Chloes who had deigned to join him in the pool after only minor cajoling. He lifted a hand to his head and rubbed at his temples. Even from across the room Gavin could see there was a smile fighting to make its way onto his lips. 

“Not to act ungrateful for the visit, but what prompted…  _ this?”  _ he finally spoke, gesturing at Gavin. 

Gavin glanced around, pretending he didn’t understand. Nothing got under Elijah’s skin more than acting dumb. “What, I can’t just visit my brother and his gorgeous girlfriends?” He rolled his head on his shoulder and looked at the Chloe nearest to him. “Can’t believe you’re with a guy like this. You could do so much better.”

Chloe blushed and laughed, a soft pretty sound that suited her to no end. She waved her hand a little and glanced at Elijah demurely. “He came because his air conditioning unit broke,” she said, ignoring Gavin’s squawk. “Will you come swim with us? It’s fun.”

Elijah let out a snort and looked at all of the Chloes, taking in their smiles and how Gavin was trying to hide his own. He shrugged. “Sure, why not?” he said, stripping his shirt off and tossing it down beside the pile of clothes Gavin had left near the edge. 

“Woah, this ain’t no skinny dipping party,” Gavin rushed right as his brother went for his jeans next. “You better be wearing shit under those.”

“I wear underwear in my own house, Gav,” Elijah sighed, yanking down his pants and stepping out of them. He was wearing expensive looking boxers under them, thank God. “I’m not you.”

Gavin made a rude gesture and then ducked his head when a tidal wave of water came at him. He spat and wiped his eyes, watching Elijah resurface after his jump with wet hair and a shit eating grin on his face. The Chloes made a bit of a fuss over it too; they’d been working so hard to keep their hair dry and now all that effort was for nothing.  

Elijah swam up to them in just a few seconds, showing off how all of that practice was paying off. He wrapped an arm around a Chloe and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “He’s been a gentleman to you all, right?” he asked, giving Gavin an assessing look. “Nothing untoward?”

“I don’t wanna hear that from someone with a fuckin’ fade cut,” Gavin retorted, earning another chorus of laughter from the girls. Elijah joined in with them, cheeks pink and teeth showing as he gripped the ledge they were all gathered at. 

“You haven’t changed a bit. So, you’re AC is broken?” Elijah tucked a wet lock of hair behind Chloe’s ear, smiling at her sweetly when she gave him an amused frown. Probably wasn’t ready to forgive him for getting her wet like that. He glanced Gavin’s way. “I’m guessing maintenance isn’t in a rush to fix it for you.”

Gavin groaned. He sank down into the water until it came up to his chin. “They’re making me wait ‘til fuckin’ Monday. I’m gonna die if I go back there.”

Elijah shrugged. “I could always look at it. Don’t know if you recall, but I’m  _ kinda  _ decent at fixing things.”

They both laughed. Understatement of the year for the man of the century. 

“Nah, it’s fine,” he returned. “I don’t need to drag you down there just for that. I just needed a break from the heat before I went crazy.” Gavin smiled a little, splashing at Elijah. He spoke louder to be heard over his brother’s squawks. “Figured you could use some more company too.”

Elijah sputtered and splashed back, and the Chloes all huffed as they swam to the far ledge to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.“God, it’s been awhile,” he said, shaking his head as he wiped the water from his eyes. “You should come by more often. Clearly you still know your way in.”

A tightness Gavin hadn’t noticed he’d been carrying eased at those words. He looked off to the side, staring out the wall length windows, out at the impressive view his brother had before him every day and probably didn’t notice any more. It really had been awhile since they’d last seen each other. Probably too long given how short the drive was from Gavin’s place in the city to here. 

“I guess visiting isn’t so bad,” he relented, snorting when Elijah smiled. The fucking dweeb. “Of course, it helps that you’ve got a pool. And all these babes. And a mansion full of free food I can—” 

He should have expected the arm that wrapped around his shoulders. He definitely expected Elijah to grunt, “You fucking brat,” before dunking him the way he used to back when they were kids at the community pool. 

Gavin grinned even as water rushed into his nose. God, just like old times. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reed900 fluff and confessions!

Work was hell on a good day. The loud voices, the tense cases, the frustration that came from loose ends refusing to tie themselves up— Gavin loved his job, but there was no way he couldn’t hate it a bit too. Life was like that. You took the good with the bad and made do with what you had to get you through the worst of it before doing it all over the next week. 

When Gavin was assigned a partner, he hadn’t had high hopes of things getting better from it. 

He just hadn’t expected things to get so much  _ worse. _

“Detective Reed, are you well?” asked Nines, the latest android to join the roster of the DPD. Bright, searching eyes stared at Gavin from across the desk cluster. Most damning of all was how completely and utterly Gavin’s type he was. Big, innocent eyes, pretty lips, and an earnestness around him that didn’t grate so much as give Gavin…  _ ideas.  _ It was distracting. Annoying. Wet dreams weren’t workplace appropriate, so why was Nines even allowed in the office? A month he’d been Gavin’s partner and it still hadn’t stopped punching him in the dick every time he saw him. It was a fucking travesty and—

Nines cocked his head, furrowing his brow. 

The movement reminded Gavin that he was staring. He sat up straight, his feet falling from the desk in a clatter that drew more than just a few eyes his way. “The fuck?” he grunted, turning his face away hurriedly. “What are you going on about now?”

Nines kept his head cocked. The LED on his temple flickered yellow, and Gavin stiffened instantly, knowing the fucking android was analyzing him for something. “You’ve been staring at me, Detective,” he reported when his LED cycled back to a cool blue that nearly matched his eyes. “Normally you make a point to avoid all contact with me, visual or otherwise, so it made me wonder if you were feeling well.”

Gavin’s cheeks grew warm. He scoffed, lifting himself from his desk despite his open case file still unread for the most part. “You’re off your fucking robo-rocker,” he said, eyes locked on the breakroom. He needed… coffee. And distance. And to get away from those blue fucking eyes and that  _ face  _ before he did something stupid, like stare a little more and give himself away completely.

If Nines watched him go, he made it a point not to look back to check. 

—

It only got worse from there. Every time Gavin looked up, Nines was watching him. How the asshole could stare so much and still beat Gavin in filling out paperwork was beyond him— it wasn’t actually.  _ Androids— _ but Gavin was hating it. Hating every second of scrutiny, every instance of Nines looking at him like he  _ knew  _ what had him so out of sorts. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Gavin was a fortress of stoicism, and no one had any idea what the issue was. 

“You’ve got a crush on him,” Tina said, her audacity off the fucking charts as she stirred her coffee spoon like it was the weather she was discussing and not his personal affairs. She glanced up, brow raised, smirk fighting it out on her lips. “And now you’ve got that constipated look. Not a good look, Gav. You’ll never kiss the boy looking like that.”

Gavin gripped the edge of the breakroom table and seriously debated flipping it. Just sending her coffee flying, like a fucking animal. He let out a hiss of a breath and slowly relaxed his grip. His coffee could go flying too if he did that. The casualties were too high. He couldn’t do it. 

“What?” he hissed through his teeth instead. “Are you fucking insane?”

Tina shrugged, lifting her coffee to take a sip. “I’m not the one who wants to fuck the toaster.”

Gavin promptly choked on his drink. It sputtered out of his mouth along with a few choice curses, the table speckled now in droplets of coffee and spit. Tina barely reacted. The cold hearted bitch just inched away from the mess, reaching for the napkin dispenser on the table to throw a balled up handful of napkins his way. “Jesus, Reed,” she muttered. “Spitters don’t impress anyone. I figured you knew that by now.”

It was good his mouth was empty, because otherwise he probably would’ve spat again hearing something like that said with the flattest, most put upon tone imaginable. Gavin coped by scrubbing angrily at the mess he’d made, leveling his supposed  _ friend  _ with the most acidic glare he could manage. “What the  _ fuck  _ is your damage, Chen?” he hissed. 

“My damage? I’ve got no clue what you’re talking about,” she said innocently enough, eyes flickering over Gavin’s shoulder before settling on him again. She tried to hide her smile in her coffee mug. “Just a little helpful advice, friend to friend. You’re insanely obvious. Might wanna do something about it before the tin man catches on too.”

“He’s not going to catch on,” Gavin practically snarled, balling up the sticky, wet napkins with more force than was necessary. 

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“Because I’m not fucking obvious,” he said, leaning over the table. 

“Obvious about what?” came another voice just over Gavin’s shoulder. 

Gavin froze. Tina—bitch that she was—full on laughed. He turned woodenly, eyes wide, mouth dry, only to crane his neck to look Nines in the eye. The android was looming behind him like some kind of ridiculously photogenic gargoyle, head cocked like a cat and waiting ever so patiently for an answer to his question to come. 

“What?” Gavin croaked. They were standing so  _ close.  _

Nines pursed his pretty lips, blinking his pretty eyes. His graceful (pretty) hands were clasped behind his back. “You and Officer Chen were discussing something,” he replied easily, LED a steady blue. Steadier than Gavin felt, that was for sure. “I was simply curious what it was.”

Gavin’s mind was blissfully, horrifically blank. He stared at Nines instead of answering. 

“Just gossip,” Tina supplied helpfully when it became clear Gavin had nothing to offer beyond the very real possibility of him drooling in the wake of Nines’s everything. She stifled a snort with her next sip. “Gavin here wasn’t keeping up well. I think he’s distracted today.”

“I have noticed that,” Nines said, giving Gavin a concerned once over. His LED went yellow. “Detective, your heart beat is very erratic, and your temperature is reading as slightly elevated. Are you certain you feel well?” 

“Hmm. Sounds serious,” Tina murmured. “Maybe he’s sick.”

“I’m fine,” Gavin managed to say, weak and ragged and absolutely not believable in any sense of the word. He turned back towards the table, making  _ help me  _ eyes at Tina as he gripped his coffee mug like a lifeline. “Just… tired. Yeah. Tired.”

“You _look_ tired,” Tina said knowingly. “Very, very tired. Maybe you need someone to tuck you in good and proper tonight. So you sleep, y’know?”

Gavin’s ears burned when Nines came a little closer, murmuring in agreement. 

“Yeah, maybe,” Gavin mumbled, absolutely certain this was the single most terrible thing to ever happen to him. 

Something warm, heavy, and bracing gripped him by the shoulder.  _ No,  _ Gavin amended as he nearly dropped his coffee mug on the table.  _ This  _ was probably the worst. Nines…  _ touching him,  _ and there was nothing manly about the way Gavin practically collapsed beneath the touch. Every muscle in his body relaxed instinctively, and when Nines pressed against his side, Gavin struggled to remember how to speak. He nearly whimpered. It’d been so fucking long since he’d been touched by any one, and it wasn’t fucking  _ fair.  _

“We’ve got some time sensitive work we need to see to, Detective,” Nines said quietly, his artificially warmed breath tickling Gavin’s ear. He had a pinched look on his face that didn’t make Gavin feel any better. “We’ll go over the case files and then I’ll let the Lieutenant know you’re not feeling well and are taking a half day. Alright?”

“Y— Yeah,” he answered, voice cracking like some kid knee deep in puberty and surrounded by the object of his desire. Maybe not surrounded. Just… backed by it. Fuck. “Yeah,” Gavin tried again, sounding more his age. He slipped through the narrow space between the table and Nines’s front, the hand falling from his shoulder with a reluctance Gavin pretended they both shared. “Let’s go.”

“Smooth,” he heard Tina call out.

“Officer Chen?” Nines asked. Gavin spun around so quickly that he nearly tripped over his own feet. He glared daggers at Tina, silently screaming at her to shut the fuck up. Her dark eyes met his for just a second. They practically glittered with the urge to ruin his fucking life. 

She looked at Nines and smiled. “Nothing,” she said angelically. 

Oh, thank god.

Her smile widened. She sipped her coffee. “You two are just cute together. All this fretting. It’s sweet. That’s all.”

Fuck everything and everyone in this entire department. 

“Tina—!” Gavin started to yell, but Nines was turning now, staring at him with those endlessly blue eyes, with that infuriatingly earnest look of his. Gavin choked on whatever he was going to say. His face was on fire. Sweat prickled along his skin. 

“So long as Detective Reed is happy and healthy, I am too,” Nines recited easily. Like he meant every word. Gavin deflated at the thought. He closed his mouth, spun on his heel, and nearly bolted back to the sanctuary of his desk. 

He was so fucked. 

— 

He was going to kill everyone in this office and then himself, he decided, when Nines calmly asked him to join him somewhere private for a “talk” before he left for his half day. 

“I just wanted to apologize,” Nines said, completely ignorant of the fact that he had Gavin pressed against a wall with no visible escape in sight. Just him, his bulk, and those horribly earnest eyes of his. 

Gavin licked at his lips, struggling to keep his mind in the present. The gutter was so enticingly close, after all, and with Nines this close, it made it all too easy to want to dive right on into the comforting sanctuary of his more colorful fantasies. “Apologize?” he made himself say anyway. “What for?”

“I’ve been pushing you.”

Pushing Gavin to the brink of insanity, yeah. Gavin would agree. He still frowned though. “Pushing me? The fuck are you on about?” 

Nines averted his eyes. He— Oh, Christ, he sucked his lower lip between his teeth, worrying it until it worried Gavin. It sprung free with a wet little release. “You’re fatigued and I believe my work pace is contributing to it,” he said, still staring at the floor. “I will apply for a transfer to a different partnership immediately, so please, don’t worry—”

Gavin grabbed him by the collar before he really knew what he was doing. “Absolutely not,” he growled, yanking the android down until they were nose to nose. He realized what he’d done a split second later, but it was too late to take it back. His heart pounded in his chest. His mouth went dry with those fucking lips barely an inch from his own.

“Detective, your heart rate has increased to twice the recom—”

Gavin didn’t think. Thinking had never gotten him far when it came to things like this, so doing could only serve him better. He smashed his lips against Nines’s, cutting the android off before he could rattle off the rest of his report. Nines’s hands gripped him back instantly. They fixed themselves to his shoulders, fingers digging in, but not to push. They didn’t try to shove him away at all. 

_ Jesus Christ,  _ Gavin thought, his brain reverting to putty the moment Nines’s parted his lips and let him go deeper.  _ Jesus fucking Christ.  _ His mouth was warm, wet, perfect. Perfect like the rest of him. Perfect like the ass Gavin couldn’t help but grab, and perfect like the weak little gasp it earned him in return. Nines fell into him, pressing him against the wall. 

When they broke apart, it was for Gavin to breathe. He did so bitterly, stubbled jaw pressed to Nines’s cheek. “Don’t you dare partner up with anyone else,” he wheezed, his glare weak when he met the android’s dazed eyes. “Don’t even  _ think  _ about it.”

“But, your health,” Nines whispered, his LED fixed on a shade of red that matched his growing blush. And who knew androids could blush? God, Gavin was going to die at this rate. The hands on his shoulders shifted, the palm of Nines’s hand moving higher to cup Gavin’s cheek with enough gentleness that it had Gavin weak in the knees. When his thumb swiped along Gavin’s cheekbone, he very well near collapsed. 

“Fuck my health,” Gavin answered. 

He couldn’t think of a better way to go than this. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this won this month's patron fic pick poll, so have at it! some cute reed900 nines-gets-a-pet funtimes!

The store smelled of wood shavings, and for the third time since they had entered, Gavin found himself fighting off a sneeze. 

“Goddamnit,” he muttered, covering his nose preemptively as Nines flitted past him and towards the rows and rows of glass tanks littering the shelves. When he’d been invited to tag along to the pet store, he hadn’t expected his allergies to throw this big of a fit over it. Gavin sniffed miserably, lowering his hand once the danger had passed. There was a reason he stuck to pets that didn’t need the bells and whistles small animals necessitated. Cats didn’t need tanks and wheels and random little things to chew on. 

“Are you sure this is the kind of pet you want?” he asked, eyeing a bag of bedding apprehensively. “How about something that isn’t the size of a thimble? What about a snake? Snakes are cool.”  _ And don’t need tiny little particles of dust floating in their cage to survive.  _

Nines looked at him from over his shoulder. He was stooped down now, nose nearly level with the tank in front of him. “I know what I want,” he said succinctly. He turned back towards the tank and his LED went yellow. “I want a Cheddar.”

Gavin rolled his eyes. Fucking Cheddar. That was all Nines had wanted to talk about for the past month. Getting Nines on Instagram had been a mistake. He’d hoped Nines would take a clue from his account and post shirtless pics post-gym, but the android had followed Connor’s trend of hunting down animal instas and falling down that rabbit hole instead. Fucking  _ Cheddar  _ had received the bulk of Nines’s attention. Instead of dogs like Connor, Nines had found hamsters.

Cheddar the Hamster was of the teddy bear variety, a little nugget of information Gavin only knew because Nines had told him. He’d then proceeded to info dump for an hour about all the various breeds of hamsters there were (Gavin had originally thought there were only two or three, but ha, the joke was on him because there were  _ nineteen)  _ and all the proper ways to care for one. What types of enclosures were best, the best kinds of enrichment toys, the best foods, all of it. 

“You know, just because you like Cheddar doesn’t mean you have to get one just like him,” Gavin said, rolling his eyes when Nines whipped around with a glare and hissed,  _ her.  _ Gavin held up his hands with a sigh. “Alright, fine, her. You don’t have to get one like her. You could get a different one. Or a different species entirely. Like a snake. Or a lizard. Hell, why not another cat? You know I like cats—” 

Nines wasn’t even pretending to listen to him now. He’d moved down the row of tanks, his nose pressed up against the glass, staring into the depths to search for the perfect hamster. Gavin rubbed at his eyes and followed. There really were a lot of hamsters here. He recognized a few from Nines’s impromptu lecture. Golden, russian, dwarf— 

“Here,” Nines declared, a little breathless. He was towards the far end of the row, squatting on the floor to look into one of the bottom-most tanks. Gavin joined him, looking at the small puddles of fur curled up inside the tiny little house that served as a communal sleeping area for the tank. Golden tufts of fur wiggled as the hamsters readjusted. A tank full of Cheddars, just as Nines wanted. 

Gavin lifted his head and looked towards the aisle. He waved his hand at a passing employee. “Hey, can we hold one of these?” he asked, pointing down at the tank. Nines didn’t move; he kept staring, eyes wide like a kid staring into the window of a candy shop. 

The worker bobbed her head and looked at the tank. “Sure, is there one you have in mind specifically?”

Gavin looked at Nines. Nines’s LED flickered red, then yellow. He pointed at the hamster furthest from the others. “This one,” he said, eyes never leaving it. 

“Sounds good.” The worker opened the lid and carefully scooped the sleeping ball of fluff out of its woodchip nest. “I need you to cup your hands for me, and try not to squeeze,” she said, holding onto the hamster until Nines stood back up. Once he was upright, she carefully tipped the tiny, wiggling creature into his big hands. “Just let me know if you want to hold a different one. It’s about feeding time anyway, so I’ll let you get acquainted.” 

Nines bobbed his head without looking away from the hamster. The worker wandered down the aisle and began pouring food pellets into bowls. Gavin wondered if that was store protocol. It seemed a little dangerous letting people hold the animals unsupervised. But then again, he supposed, turning his attention back to Nines, they probably were in better hands when those hands belonged to an android than to some overzealous little kid.

Though, looking at Nines, it was probably fair to call him overzealous too. In fact it was as if a switch had been flipped; Nines’s eyes were wide, his artificial breathing hitching in a more than human manner. Gavin bit his lip. He hadn’t expected this sort of thing to make Nines this happy. Now he felt a little like a dick for dragging his heels as much as he had. 

Gavin reached out a hand and ran it down the fluffy back of the hamster busy sniffing and licking at Nines’s thumb. It was soft. Very soft. Huh. 

“Pretty cute, huh,” he admitted, lifting one of the hamster’s tiny little feet onto the tip of his finger. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one up close like this before.” Being a cat lover ran in the family. Small rodents weren’t welcome in his childhood home, not unless they wanted to end up on the front porch as an offering. 

When Nines didn’t reply, Gavin glanced up. “Do you want to take this little guy home?”

God, what a sight. The expression on Nines’s face was so slight, so unbearably tender that it felt intrusive to look at it for too long. Nines cradled the small hamster in the palms of his hands. His LED cycled a calm, steady blue. 

“Yes,” Nines whispered, looking at Gavin through his lashes. “I think I found the one I want.”

Gavin just smiled. He smiled as his heart clenched worryingly in his chest. “Alright,” he said, waving down the worker from down the aisle. “Let’s make it official then.”

Maybe the allergies were worth it after all. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a bit spicier than some of the other ones! enjoy some horny-for-inhuman-creatures!gavin and some power tripping nines content <3

If there had been one thing Nines had come to realize throughout his journey to self-actualization as a deviant, it was that he did  _ not  _ like the unexpected. Be it in changes to his schedule or breaks in the pre-constructed paths he’d already long set into motion, he could conclusively state that there wasn’t much on this earth that raised his hackles straight to the sky more than life sending his expectations screeching to a grinding halt. 

Today, unfortunately, was that sort of day. 

“Jesus, top of the line model and there you go getting yourself blown to fucking pieces by the most obvious trap in  _ existence!”  _ Gavin Reed’s voice carried from deeper within the makeshift workbench that served as the DPD’s temporary android reserves station. A better one was on its way, the top brass had said. Just keep your androids out of trouble and there wouldn’t be any need to do in-house repairs. Nines had scoffed at the idea when it was brought to his attention. He wasn’t so clumsy as to get himself injured in the line of duty. And yet… 

“I’m hardly blown to pieces, Detective,” Nines countered, cradling his mangled arm against his pockmarked chest. “The shrapnel injured my external casing and internal damage is minimal, if any.” His arm was nigh-on useless at the moment, but he was hard at work fixing the damage already. “If you’d just find me the materials I specified to you before, this would all go much faster.”

Gavin muttered something into the depths of the bench, shifting aside and at times outright throwing unwanted parts over his shoulder as he searched for the specific repair equipment needed for the work ahead. “You stepped on a  _ grenade,”  _ he said, lifting his head just to glare. His lip was curled into a nasty frown, his voice steeped in disbelief. “A fucking grenade. Who the fuck does that? Who the fuck doesn’t  _ see  _ it on the fucking ground and, I dunno,  _ step over it?” _

Nines rolled his eyes and made for the mini fridge on the other side of the room, fighting through the synapses and sensors in his mind-palace screaming at him to assess damage, compute energy levels, and seek out a Cyberlife repair facility immediately. He shoved the warnings aside, clearing his display so he could see the packets of thirium laid out in neat little stacks within the fridge. He grabbed the freshest one and pinned it between the nearest counter and his hip. It was tricky opening the top one-handed, but he was top-of-the-line. He’d manage. He always did. 

“If I had stepped over it, that would have left you to step on it instead.” The packet opened and Nines navigated it carefully to his lips, drinking deeply to replenish the thirium he’d lost during the explosion and then on the way back to the precinct when his internal repair attempts had proven useless in combating the worst of the damage. He drank deep, deeper, drank until his levels were at a suitable level and his processors were once again operating at peak levels. He lowered the packet and licked the excess from his lips. He turned around and made his way back towards Gavin. “Would you have preferred that?” he asked, standing at Gavin’s side, looking down on the detective and his thirium-stained jacket, the scratched and bloody hands buried in the tools that had tried so very hard to brush away the worst of the shrapnel once they both recovered from the initial blast enough to move. 

Gavin didn’t wince as he wrapped his fingers around the leather pouch containing the tools they needed for what came next. “Maybe,” he said, more to be contrary than sincere, Nines knew. Gavin was always like that, hiding the truth behind a thousand weak lies and enough animosity to keep most from wanting to look deeper for the truth. He rose to his feet in one smooth motion, waving the pouch in front of Nines’s face. “It would have spared me from dealing with your broke ass. What next, pincushion?”

“What’s next is removing the worst of the shrapnel so my internal repair units can do their job.” Gritting his teeth, Nines let go of his ruined arm to free up his good hand enough to rip the buttons from his ruined shirt. Gavin sputtered a little, but quieted down as he dragged the jacket off first, and then the shirt beneath it, baring his arm to the open air. “Please hand me the appropriate tools as I need them,” he said briskly, working the sleeve over his limp arm. Blue soaked the fabric, dripping down his skin in thick rivulets. They would need to work quickly before he wasted all the thirium he’d just drank. 

“Um, alright.” Gavin fumbled to open the pouch. “God, it looks like you were a star in some snuff film or something.”

“Or something,” Nines echoed dryly. It certainly did look grisly. The sooner they took care of this, the sooner they could put it behind them and move onto dealing with the fallout of their disaster of a case. 

Nines let his projected skin bleed away, revealing the casing below. 

This wasn’t the sort of thing he normally did around people. Unlike many of Cyberlife’s earlier designs, he had been designed less for blending seamlessly with humans and more for structural integrity. He probably had that to thank for the amount of damage he enjoyed now. Instead of smooth, plasticine white, his body was made up of panels and segments of white and grey exoskeleton, sutured together with joints and rivets that sat smooth beneath the skin he normally boasted during day-to-day operations. 

It was in the crease of one of these segmentations that the most pressing of his injuries presented itself. Nines frowned at the sight of the sharp, jagged piece of shrapnel lodged between the gap of his elbow, grating and scratching the delicate wires lying just beneath the hard outer shell. Normally something like this wouldn’t have penetrated at all; it was just dumb luck that it’d found one of the few thin parts on his body to slip through. 

Today really was just a terrible day, wasn’t it?

“If you’d hand me the forceps, please,” he said dispassionately, using his pre-construction program to assess the best way to remove the offending shrapnel without accidentally severing an important wire or scratching anything essential to continued operation of the limb. 

He let out a sigh and looked up when the requested tool wasn’t deposited in his hand thirty seconds later. “I know you know what forceps are, Detecti…” Nines paused. Gavin was staring at him. Staring at him hard, with eyes wide and his heart rate elevated. Nines narrowed his eyes. “Is there something wrong, Detective?”

Inexplicably, Gavin’s face turned bright red. He fumbled the armful of tools he held, nearly dropping the forceps in his struggle to throw them in Nines’s direction. “I’m fucking fine,” he muttered, his ears bleeding red next. “Just… never seen you without your skin before. It’s… weird.”

There was a weird hiccup to his heart then, and if Nines had to guess, he’d say the man just lied. Lied about what, he couldn’t tell. He hadn’t thought there was much of anything to lie about in that statement. He cocked his head and took the forceps, staring hard at Gavin. “I don’t make it a habit to walk around without it,” he said carefully. “I’m well aware that my outer casing is more alien than the average android’s. I wouldn’t want to alarm anyone or cause undue stress in the workplace.”

Gavin’s eyes flitted between his chest and his face. They settled somewhere between, and it only took a moment for Nines to realize he was staring at his mouth. Odd. Gavin’s adam’s apple bobbed with a harsh swallow. “Why is your voice different now?” he asked, crossing his arms across his chest tight. Sweat prickled his skin. Nines could taste it. Gavin tasted… anxious, maybe. 

Using the forceps, Nines closed the tips around the piece of shrapnel in accordance with his pre-constructions, yanking with the precise amount of force necessary to remove it without severing the delicate coil of wires beneath that controlled the mobility of the limb lying in wait just beneath it. “It’s connected to my skin projection program,” Nines explained distractedly. Not from the repair work— he could perform that with much less attention than he currently employed now. No, he was focusing the majority of his attention on Gavin and his odd physical state. His blood flow had shifted now, his respiration increasing as if he were undergoing some sort of physical duress. “It’s an all or nothing sort of thing. I don’t have my skin on, so my vocal modulation defaults to a baseline state as well.” 

Nines dropped the blue-soaked piece of metal on the floor, glancing up at Gavin curiously. “If it bothers you that much, I can put it back on.”

Gavin jolted as if shocked when the metal clinked on the ground. He held himself tightly around the middle, then shook his head hard enough to rattle himself. “N-No,” he spat, cheeks a violent red and only growing darker by the second. He looked Nines in the eye for a split second. “Don’t bother. It’s fine. I don’t mind it.”

Nines’s eyes widened. His hand hovered over the next piece of shrapnel, stunned. Was that… Could it really be… It made sense in an odd way. The vehement verbal distaste, the outward hostility, the increased blood pressure and now  _ dilated eyes.  _

It was arousal, Nines realized. Gavin was aroused by his exposed, android chassis. He liked his unmodulated voice, the alien appearance. 

“Really,” Nines mused, the word flat and robotic, belying the entertained twist that was curling his lips into a knowing smile. “You don’t mind it.”

Gavin dropped his arms, putting his hands at his sides. The repair kit pouch was clutched tightly in a white-knuckled fist. “That’s what I just said, isn’t it? Did that explosion break your auditory functions too?” Gavin scoffed, turning to the side.  _ He’s trying to hide,  _ Nines’s processors supplied helpfully. “Hurry up and fix your fucking arm. We haven’t got all day.”

They could, Nines wanted to say. They could have as much time as they wanted. They’d already reported in the damage that had been done to them both during the incident. They’d already sent a supplemental team back to the crime scene to take care of the rest while they came back here to lick their wounds and regroup. 

Nines knew it wasn’t practical to think like that. They still had a job to do, and he wasn’t in the habit of wasting his time when he could be working. His pre-construction program whirled to life automatically, showing him a thousand potential ways this could progress instead. 

His hand wrapped around Gavin’s wrist, pinning him to the wall. His hand around his throat, guiding the detective to his knees where he would grow pliant and oh so willing to please. There was no hurry in the thought, no rousing sense of anything from Nines. He’d never desired, never lusted. The concept was foreign in the way most human things were, but he couldn’t deny there being something… compelling… about the thought of having Gavin pliant beneath him. 

“Is that what you really want?” Nines asked, his voice flat, inflectionless, yet still so full of beautiful ambiguity. 

Gavin turned a little, looking at him with eyes that said more than words ever could. “What… are you talking about, tinman?”

“I think you know.”

An increase in heart rate answered him. Gavin locked up, frozen, a deer in the headlights.  

Nines couldn’t say he was a fan of the unexpected… but this?

A grin split his lips, knowing how sharp and animalistic his teeth looked like this, and Gavin  _ shivered.  _

This just might be the exception to the rule. 


End file.
